GYGO: Zelda and Tom Nook Return, But Will the Crunch Ever Stop?

Hello again, game pals! Emily here, bringing you yet another week of the good ol’ GYGO. We all know that E3 was last week, so let’s cut to the chase:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Announced

Nintendo finally announced at E3 that Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be released on March 20, 2020! We finally have a release date. While the date itself is significantly later than they had originally implied, new Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser (I will never get over his name) has stated that this delay is to avoid crunch. I am extremely willing to wait a few more months if it means the developers get to experience a healthy work-life balance.

Doug bowser: Animal Crossing is going to be delayed…Me: Aw.Doug Bowser: … So our employees can have a healthy balance between work and their lives. Me: Take all the goddamn time you need, you wonderful people.

Also, a Sequel to Breath of the Wild

Nintendo confirmed that it is creating a sequel to Breath of the Wild, as a surprise announcement at the end of its E3 presentation. We really don’t know much more than that, but I, for one, am stoked as hell.

This Week In Crunch

As games and the gaming industry get larger and more ambitious, developers and studios have taken to forcing mandatory overtime on their workers to meet deadlines and demand. This controversial and exploitative workplace culture—where employees are overworked, underpaid, and burnt out, followed frequently by mass layoffs and ever-increasing wage inequality between workers and high-paid executives—is known as “crunch.” TWIC is a column within a column where Emily Durham brings you news about this week’s world of crunch.

So along with E3’s many announcements, there was inevitably also quite a lot of (external) discourse around the crunch problem in the games industry.

Now, I personally think that Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be underwhelming at best and a racist trash fire at worst, but on top of that, I think crunch is going to be a big problem for its developers. My feelings on this were further solidified by the announcement by CD Projekt Red saying that it wants to ensure that its developers don’t have to endure the same crunch that they experienced when producing The Witcher 3. Its official stance is one of “non-obligatory crunch,” a policy that says that developers don’t have to work long hours if they don’t want to.

On the surface, that sounds fine, but if you think about it, it’s still encouraging developers to work long hours to get things done. Sort of like, “only take a break if you really, really think you need it.” And, as THE DISCOURSE has quickly pointed out, the ones not participating in crunch will inevitably be made to feel guilty when others are crunching, and management will almost certainly overlook them for promotions or worse, fire them for a perceived lack of work ethic. So yeah. I don’t think “non-obligatory crunch” is a particularly confidence-inspiring concept.

(There’s nothing more cyberpunk than defiance in the face of corporate power. Organize!)

Guy Who Decides Whether Workers Get Promoted Or Fired Says Workers Can Decide Whether To Work More https://t.co/Sr8kR1bpNQ

Non-obligatory crunch is such an underhanded term. So often in industry crunch can happen over a guilt that others are crunching and you are not. The work environment or choice of words from production/management can make you feel like you need to crunch even if it's "optional" https://t.co/2vjncjcPQG

Emily Durham is a science writer by day and a Sidequest copyeditor by night. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her playing Stardew Valley or Sunless Sea, sewing korok cosplays, or taking blurry pictures of her two perfect cats. She tweets sporadically at @EmilyRoseDurham.